July 14, 2021

by Robert Kaplan

“This is a one,” you say, “and this another,”
and effortlessly I follow to where you mean:
things whole and closed, like apples on a sill.
But “one”? To suggest “complete,” “compact,” “atomic”
fetches too far and brings too little back.
One is so fully a point it no more than points—
there, over there, that your limiting lets you sum to,
past what are these—scrims, space and time—to form per se.

Published on May 8, 2023